Do Women Hate Men Who Cheat?

Part of the post-mortem on the Letterman-sex-and-shakedown story is about the damage he might have done to his female audience. Women may stop watching him with the same consistency or attention because he wasn't monogamous. The implication is that the women of America have an instinctive sympathy for the person he was supposed to be having sex with (his girlfriend of long-standing, Regina Lasko, the mother of his child, who he finally married this year) and that they feel and share her pain at the betrayal, even though, in this case, we don't know what she feels.

In addition, the women of America may also sympathize with the other women he had sex with because, as their boss and as a celebrity, he had an unfair advantage. It seems he was never going to marry and, hence, be monogamous with any of them either. At the same time, while sympathizing with these other women, the women of America are basically predisposed against them for causing Dave to not be monogamous with the woman he's supposed to have been monogamous with (who, in her turn, may have caused him to not be monogamous with someone else, but that is too far back and there is a statute of limitations).

Anyway, I think that is the situation as the media seems to see it. So is it true? Do women, more or less collectively, empathize with a man's primary relationship?

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Comments

[AgathaX]

Perhaps there is a single, very busy woman out there who is holding up the woman's side in all adulterous relationships, but I don't think so. My sense is that for every adulterous man or woman, there is an aquiescing woman or man that makes the adultery possible. I had a single such relationship a couple of decades ago, and while not one of my prouder moments, it was incredibly, well, normal. I don't feel particularly culpable as I was very, very young, and I was the only one of the two of us who expressed any reservation at all about the whole unseemly business.

And while the whole business has seemed sillier and sillier as I've gotten older, particularly five years or so ago when I passed the age he was at the time, it has never caused me to feel any sort of hositility toward the man. Nor have I one whit of ill feeling against Letterman, who I think has handled this whole kerfuffle masterfully. May his wife forgive him and may he never act so absurdly again.

[brijit]

I just love it when guys tell a monolithic group called "women" how it should feel.

[S1m0n]

Every time a straight man cheats, at least one woman was there to give consent.

[MerhabaAbi]

Bold headline for an article that asks some more realistic questions.

[WorkingClass]

Women do their best to make male infidelity a capital offense. Maybe they are hardwired that way (nature) or maybe they have been conditioned by centuries of dependence on men (nurture). I don't know the answer but I bet we will get a variety of opinions.

[Sir681]

It's a cultural thing. We here in America make a very big deal about sex and anything related to it, and a lot of people here believe that it is their God-given right to pick apart and cast judgement on other people's personal lives. I attribute that kind of behaviour to our self-righteous, moralistic and judgemental nature.

Now, in other cultures, what Letterman did wouldn't raise the slightest eyebrow, as what people do in their private lives is their own business, have no effect on their professional lives and certainly not newsworthy. All those politicians and their affairs wouldn't have an impact on their electability.

We are just obsessed with sticking our noses in other people's affairs (pun intended).

[Sunshine1970]

I think it depends on the situation.

In the case of Letterman, it won't stop me from tuning in if I want. I think he's funny, and has good interviews. Besides, we don't know the relationship with his then girlfriend now wife, if it was an open one, or were they on and off dating, etc. I really don't care. It's between him and his wife and how they want to handle it.